Using Rank Math will help you improve the optimization of your site. We've outlined how the plugin works with Business Directory Plugin below. Let's get started!

Step 1: Use the setup wizard provided by Rank Math — it's the fastest way to get going with the plugin!

The setup wizard asks you some basic questions about your site, and you have the option to go with the Easy installation or taking more advanced steps if you're knowledgeable in SEO.

Step 2: Set up the basic SEO settings for your site by using the Snippet Preview.

Rank Math provides a preview of what your search engine result may look like and you can see this for both mobile and desktop versions. This is helpful because you can think like someone who is looking for information on your site and customize the information to enter in the text that you think would make the biggest impression upon customers who come across your site.

It's important to note that while the snippet is what you want to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs) Google will often ignore the contents of this tag and pull other text from your site. The search engine does this to find the text on your site that is most relevant to the terms the user has used for their search. However, many times Google will display the meta description as you've entered it. Either way, it's better to have this information entered here than to not have it at all.

While it has been debated whether the snippet affects SEO, it definitely affects how often someone who finds your listing in the SERPs will click on the link to your site. You want to make the snippet as enticing and relevant as possible to the searcher!

Rank Math makes it easy to preview what the SERPs will look like for individual listings, which you can then customize.

Step 3: Adjust the archive page titles and descriptions as desired, as well as edit your categories and directory tags pages.

From the Rank Math dashboard, you can set the Directory, Directory Categories, and Directory Tags titles and descriptions, as shown below:

But the real payoff with Rank Math comes with taking this a step further and getting into the nitty-gritty by really optimizing your directory categories and tags individually. To take advantage of this feature of Rank Math for SEO, first go to Rank Math → Titles & Meta and select Directory Categories and Directory Tags. From here, locate the Add SEO Controls option and enable this.

Once you have enabled these options you can now go to Directory → Directory Content → Directory Categories or Directory → Directory Content → Directory Tags and you will see that Rank Math gives you many of the same customization options you have with individual listings as well:

Being able to do this for both Categories and Tags is pretty awesome and will definitely contribute to your overall SEO!

Step 4: Optimize individual listings as desired

Rank Math is not unique in that most SEO plugins give you some feedback on your title and content. However, Rank Math takes this a step further and really gets into the weeds with you on what you can address on your page to make it more optimized. This works for any page on your site, but specifically for Business Directory Plugin, the listings can be optimized individually.

The checklists Rank Math provides for each listing and the links they provide for learning more about new concepts are super educational and you'll be a whiz at SEO for your directory site in no time!

Step 5: Take things a step further with Social Media sharing settings

We all agree that any good SEO plan will include an eye toward social media. Rank Math makes sharing your directory content on social media super easy!

In each individual listing, you have the ability to set some basics for individual listings if you prefer. Just click Social on the Rank Math SEO menu in the listing:

And then choose your settings for that individual listing (Note: you can choose any thumbnail for the listing by choosing it from your media library):

Here is an example of what your social share might look like once you have completed the settings.

Note also that Rank Math allows you to set a default social media setting image in case the listing you are using doesn't have an image. That's in the general settings under Rank Math → Titles & Meta → Global Meta:

Step 6: Evaluate

Evaluation is the hallmark of any successful SEO strategy. In fact, SEO can be thought of as continually optimizing your directory pages and listings, waiting some time, analyzing the results, then repeating the whole process over again.

Rank Math gives you a few tools to measure your success according to the SEO standards that can be manipulated with their plugin. Under Directory → Directory Listings you can see some basics of each of your listings at a glance:

And too, when you're inside each listing there will be a little SEO score for how well optimized the listing is:

In summary, Rank Math is a great tool to use to optimize your online business directory!

In this article, we'll cover how to use the popular AIOSEO plugin with your Business Directory Plugin site. If you haven't already, please read our SEO Guide blog post for optimizing the fields in Business Directory Plugin.

Getting Started

AIOSEO wastes no time in getting you set up! Once you've downloaded the plugin, you can go through the setup wizard they offer. If you do this, be sure to select Include All Post Types as you go through the wizard:

Asking AIOSEO to include all post types ensures that it will recognize the custom post types that are associated with Business Directory Plugin.

Directory Listing Settings

Inside each listing, you have options to customize the SEO elements available to that listing individually. Changing the settings here will affect that individual listing only. Most times, users won't need to do this, but we want to show everything that is possible!

Snippet Preview

We discussed the snippet preview in our General SEO Guide, but to remind you quickly — the snippet is what you want to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs). However, please keep in mind that Google will often ignore the contents of this tag and pull other text from your site sometimes. The search engine does this to find the text on your site that is most relevant to the terms the user has used for their search. However, many times Google will display the meta description as you've entered it.

While it has been debated whether the snippet affects SEO, it definitely affects how often someone who finds your listing in the SERPs will click on the link to your site. You want to make the snippet as enticing and relevant as possible to the searcher!

AIOSEO makes it easy to preview what the SERPs will look like for individual listings, which you can then customize.

Listing Title

Looking more closely at the Snippet Preview, you can see what we've numbered the individual parts you see in the SERP to match the fields you can edit in AIOSEO.

1. listing title
2. separator
3. site title
4. separator
5. site tagline

You can rearrange these things, add new tags, change separators, and even type custom text in this area. You'd likely not want to do this because the Listing Title should be short and tell the user exactly what they'll get if they click on the link to your site, but it's nice to know that you have the option.

NOTE: The tagline was added for illustration purposes only — this is not something you'd want to do on your site! Typically, the tagline is longer than what is recommended for your title tags.

Meta Description

The meta description is where you can get a bit more creative with your words and include the keyphrases for which you want to optimize the listing. Again, you can add a whole host of variables here that AIOSEO provides as well as custom text, and you can see a real-time update of what the changes look like in the Snippet Preview before you make your final changes.

Focus keyphrase

The Focus Keyphrase is a concept that is relevant to your Title and Meta Description tags, as well as the content of the listing. In this setting, you can choose the top keyphrase you want the listing to be found for and the plugin will automatically give you an analysis of how well you're doing with that keyphrase in the listing. The free version allows you to analyze one keyphrase, while the paid version allows more than one.

Global Settings

The Directory Settings in AIOSEO are located under SEO Search Appearance Content Types. These settings will only affect your directory listing pages and not your entire site. These settings set up the defaults and then you can go into individual listings to change or customize settings for listings further.

The snippet preview on this page and the Listing Title and Meta Description sections all operate the same way as they are described in the individual listing section. The main difference is that this is the template for individual listings.

How will I know how I'm doing?

AIOSEO provides a scoring mechanism and you'll see it throughout the pages on the backend of your site in WordPress. Don't worry, visitors to your site won't see it.

Here's what the score looks like:

Obviously, the goal is to be the most optimized you can be, and AIOSEO helps you get there with this visual reminder. In order to obtain a score, you'll need to add a keyphrase to the settings.

AIOSEO also offers lots of tips for improving your SEO scores and you can check for Basic SEO issues, errors or suggestions in your title tags, and the general readability of your page.

Business Directory Plugin is a custom post type, so it automatically creates an RSS Feed. The URL for your site will look like this: https://demo.businessdirectoryplugin.com/feed/?post_type=wpbdp_listing

Just substitute your domain name where you see our demo domain name, and you will be able to access your RSS Feed. Here are a few examples:

https://mytestwebsite.com/feed/?post_type=wpbdp_listing

https://widgets.com/feed/?post_type=wpbdp_listing

We've worked with Frederic to make sure we are 100% compatible to transfer listing data including Maps and Ratings data (you need to purchase those add ins for BD if you want to use that data in WordPress)

Any issues with the conversion from Joomla, please contact Frederic: http://www.fredericgilles.net/contact/

The pricing shows up when you are logged in and click on one of the themes for more information.

However, there is a great plugin that DOES know how to use custom post types and display the categories here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/list-custom-taxonomy-widget/

There are two situations where you would use CSV import to create listings:

1. Adding New Listings. If you are importing a CSV file for the first time, the main thing to keep in mind is that if you upload a new CSV each time you want to add listings, then new listings will be created. Full documentation for that is here: https://businessdirectoryplugin.com/knowledge-base/csv-import-export/
2. Changing Existing Listings. To UPDATE  existing listings, you will need to have the Sequence ID for each listing.

The only way to get the sequence ID for a listing is to do an export from the current directory. To begin that process, go to Directory → Directory Content → Import & Export and check the box next to “Include unique IDs for each listing (sequence_id column).”

You can change and update all kinds of information using the Export-Change-Re-import method. For example, you can change plans for a large number of listings. The steps for doing this example would be:

1. Export the listings with the Sequence ID
2. Change the plan in the CSV file
3. Re-import the listings.

The plan IDs are located under Directory → Directory Content → Plans.

Please note that if you are changing the plan, the listing owner should agree to the new terms of the plan. Changing the plan ID when a listing is already paying via monthly recurring charges will not change the amount they are (or are not) paying. If you wanted to do that, the listing would need to be deleted and the owner would need to agree to the new terms. Users can upgrade their listings or change their plan only at renewal, so please keep this in mind.

NOTE: Some themes don't persist all their settings when you deactivate them (this is BAD behavior by a theme, not a problem caused by us…). Make sure you either keep track of where your widgets were or you have a reliable backup to ensure that you don't lose any settings.

Plugins don't generally have this issue, but not all plugins are well-written. BD will ALWAYS preserve its settings and data if you deactivate it.

Plugin Conflict Check

This is a temporary check to find out if any other plugin is interfering with BD's functionality. It's not intended as a fix, only as a way to find out what the cause of the problem is.

• deactivate all plugins except Business Directory Plugin (deactivate add-ons too)
• remove all custom code, including PHP and Javascript
• switch to the default 2020 theme
• update Business Directory Plugin to the current version, if it isn't already
• update WordPress to the current version, if it isn't already
• clear all caching on your site and in your browser (check with your host, as they sometimes also cache your site)
• if you use a service like CloudFlare, put it in developer mode while testing

If the issue doesn't show up under these circumstances, you can add each item back in, one at a time, and test after adding each one until you find the culprit.

Use a staging site

​
If this is a live site, you can do the test on a copy of the site (a staging site), instead. If you put the staging site on staging.yoursite.com or dev.yoursite.com, you won't need an extra license for it.
​
Some hosts have an easy way to create a staging site. If yours doesn't, you can copy your site using free plugins like All in One WP Migration or Duplicator or any other plugin or system you like. Your host may be willing to create a staging site for you if you ask.

It's important to understand if a theme or plugin conflict is happening since every plugin and theme can be a little bit different. For theme problems, we will likely refer you to the theme developer or perhaps offer a simple fix (if we know of it). Plugin problems may be resolved if you recently updated to a new version by downgrading to the last good version you were using.

In general, we can't really fix issues with other plugins if they are doing something that violates WordPress standards. We will do our best to help, but if we find this to be the case, you'll need to get in touch with the plugin or theme developer and ask them to fix it.

Business Directory Plugin can be set up to work this way.

Step 1. Create the listing on the back end of the system under Directory → Directory Content → Add New Listing. You can choose to have the listing either published or in draft mode, whichever you prefer.

Step 2. Be sure that you DO NOT select a plan for the listing.

Step 3. Assign the listings to the specified user in WordPress. This is done via the author field near the bottom of the listing on the backend.

Step 4. When the new user logs in to your site, they can use the “renew” button to pay for the ad. You can create a page for users to manage their accounts by using the
[businessdirectory-manage-listings] shortcode.

This is a viable workaround if creating ads for your users makes sense. If you need further assistance, please reach out to us here.

When setting up a new listing on your site, users will receive an email with a link to their listing information. If the user keeps that email handy, the link in it will take them directly to their listing.

This feature allows users to access all of their listings quickly and easily.

New Manage Listings Button

If your users aren't seeing the Manage Listings button, you can check your settings to be sure it is turned on. To make the Manage Listings button appear, turn on the Manage Listings setting under Directory → Settings → Listings → Buttons:

Once logged into the site, users will see this button on the directory navigation page:

I hear you asking — what happens when that email gets lost or misplaced?

Create an account page

The best practice here is to create a page on your site to allow users to log in and manage their listings.

To allow this to happen, create a separate page on your site and call it something like “Account access” or whatever makes the most sense for your site. Add relevant instructions or other informational text on the page as necessary.

Once you have created the page, you can then put this shortcode on the page:

  [businessdirectory-manage-listings]

Users will then be able to log in and manage their listings, and they will also see the button described above.

How does this help with renewals?

Renewals are also available on when you use the manage listings shortcode on the account page as well.

When you have created a way for users to log in to your site and if they want to manage or renew their listings, they can do that with the click of a button. The expired ad shows up on this page as show below.

Once users click on renew listing, they will be given these options: